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THE IMPORTANCE of LIVING. by Lin Yutang. Morrow. 462 Pp inated by corporations is one in which most they court truth like ardent lovers, but sel- individuals are “employees rather than inde- dom propose to marry her.” In the Chinese pendent producers.” Hayek never demon- tradition, the point is not to “have a great strated how capitalism, which presupposes philosophy or have a few great philoso- the continued vitality of an entrepreneurial phers”; rather it is “to take things philosoph- class, could survive in such an adverse envi- ically”—to live in a way that makes life not ronment. only bearable but delightful. Perhaps most timely is Gamble’s observa- Delight is Lin’s true subject. Should we tion that “the apartheid regime in South read books to improve our minds? No, he Africa in the 1950s and 1960s could have replies, “because when one begins to think been defended on Hayekian principles.” of improving his mind, all the pleasure is That the regime lacked democratic or moral gone.” Sitting upright at a desk will not help. legitimacy is of little matter; it was capitalist, Conversely, “if one knows the enjoyment of after all. No wonder the American Left reading,” one can study anywhere, “even in never devoted much time to refuting Hayek’s the best schools.” And when school is out, ideas. It understood that an exclusively eco- one can follow “the famous Ch’ing scholar, nomic argument in favor of bourgeois soci- Ku Ch’ienli,... ‘known for his habit of read- ety leaves that society defenseless against its ing Confucian classics naked’ in summer.” radical critics. The lesson Lin teaches is that delight is —Adam Wolfson neither as easy nor as hard to attain as people think. The easy part is agreeing that warmth, THE IMPORTANCE OF LIVING. vitality, and the capacity to experience plea- By Lin Yutang. Morrow. 462 pp. $26 sure are among the necessary conditions. Lin Yutang (1895–1976) was a lazy fellow The hard part is accepting that they are not from Fujian Province who smoked too many sufficient. “Because life is harsh,” Lin cau- cigarettes and, after abandoning his parents’ tions, “warmth of soul is not enough, and devout but narrow Christianity, spent the passion must be joined to wisdom and rest of his life loafing with friends from courage.” At the word “wisdom” we balk, Shanghai to Cambridge (Massachusetts), picturing Chinese sages with wispy white Leipzig to Beijing, New York to Taipei. He beards on impossible, cloud-covered peaks. also wrote or translated some 80 books, We’re not about to climb those peaks, so why founded three magazines, and invented the bother to seek wisdom? first Chinese typewriter. Published in 1937, Not to worry, assures Lin, bringing us gen- this most seductive of Lin’s works became a tly back to earth. It’s the little things that best seller in the United States years before count: the quotidian business of “eating and the Beats took up Zen or the swingers tack- sleeping, of meeting and saying good-bye to led the Kama Sutra. But this introduction to friends, of reunions and farewell parties, of Chinese philosophy is no compendium of tears and laughter, of having a haircut once inscrutable wisdom from the mysterious in two weeks, of watering a potted flower and Orient. Instead, it offers sweet and salty mus- watching one’s neighbor fall off his roof.” We ings on such topics as “On Having a are human beings, not gods. Stomach,” “The Cult of the Idle Life,” “On Or ants. One test of Lin’s durability is his Being Wayward and Incalculable,” and quick distrust of totalitarianism. In 1937, he “Good Taste in Knowledge.” took a dim view of Hitler and Mussolini— One of Lin’s main concerns—which he but then so did most intellectuals. More shares with Confucian and Taoist thinkers striking is his wisecrack that the ants must be going back 25 centuries—is the arrogance of “the most completely rational creatures on pure intellect. “Philosophy in the Western earth,” because for a million years they have sense seems to the Chinese eminently idle,” lived in “a perfect socialist state.” Lin’s only he writes. “In its preoccupation with logic, error was to predict that such ant-idiocy which concerns itself with the method of would never succeed in China. But since his arrival at knowledge, and epistemology, real point was that totalitarianism contradicts which poses the question of possibility of human nature, he was more right than knowledge, it has forgotten to deal with the wrong. And about everything else he is as knowledge of life itself.... The German right, and fresh, as spring rain. philosophers are the most frivolous of all; —Martha Bayles Books 103.
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